


there is quiet, for just a moment

by psikeval



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-01
Updated: 2015-11-01
Packaged: 2018-04-29 11:28:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5125760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/psikeval/pseuds/psikeval
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>It is not serious.</i> These are the words relayed to him by the doctor, before their stalwart old physician must leave to attend to injured men of lesser rank, and Hamilton cannot for the life of him comprehend the phrase. Not serious? It is Laurens.</p>
            </blockquote>





	there is quiet, for just a moment

**Author's Note:**

  * For [pearwaldorf (sonatine)](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=pearwaldorf+%28sonatine%29).



_“It was not his fault that he was not killed or wounded […]  
_ _he did everything that was necessary to procure one or the other.”_

\- Gilbert du Marquis de Lafayette, on John Laurens  
in regards to the Battle of Monmouth

 

_It is not serious_. These are the words relayed to him by the doctor, before their stalwart old physician must leave to attend to injured men of lesser rank, and Hamilton cannot for the life of him comprehend the phrase. Not serious? It is Laurens.

Laurens, who appears to be settled comfortably enough on his bedroll when Hamilton enters, his shirt haphazardly buttoned over any bandages, as if to give the impression they do not exist at all; the concealment is most certainly not the doctor’s handiwork. A smile sparks in his eyes.

“Alexander,” he says warmly, like that is all he requires to be content.

It’s agonizing. Hamilton has to move, do _something_ , before the weight of it breaks him.

Firstly, he removes Laurens’ boots, knowing as he does how John hates to lie down in them, and sets them aside. Beyond that task? Hamilton finds himself at a loss. Were there more space in the tent, he would pace. There is not. He cannot even speak with his hands—the broad, bold gestures to which Hamilton is accustomed—because hours later, they still betray him by shaking.

“You have to stop doing this,” he finally says, his voice tight with the effort of not shouting.

“What? Fighting?” Laurens spares him a smile, wide and bright, only the slightest bit pained. “That’s funny, from you.”

“I mean—” _trying to get yourself killed_ , is what he means, but Laurens lifts one wry, knowing eyebrow and Alexander deflates. He’ll not waste breath on the rest, only to be called a hypocrite. Rightly so, and yet. And _yet_. In his own heart, he is keenly aware of the difference.

It is what they don’t seem to understand, these dear friends of his — even John Laurens, whom he loves when all the rest of the world cannot be borne.

Hamilton will give his life without hesitation. What he cannot do, under any circumstances, is lose them.

He plants himself firmly, almost mutinously, at Laurens’ bedside. His hair is spread across the pillow, and Hamilton traces careful fingers through it without speaking. Laurens is too pale, too weak, the entire situation intolerable. He remembers burying his hands in that lovely thick hair, the very first time they kissed.

It had been in Mulligan’s spare room, where Hamilton was staying at the time. Working together on an essay more heartfelt than polished, agreeing with each other more volubly by the hour. They were young and impressed by themselves—by each other—the evening was quiet and warm for it. Professions of mutual admiration, perhaps adoration, helped along by drink, until Hamilton felt he had no choice but to kiss him. Laurens responded in kind, knocking over several books in the process; they couldn’t stop. They have not stopped, even when God knows they should.

“I won’t do this by halves, Alexander,” he says now, gently, as if to soothe him.

Hamilton blinks back to the present, startled. “What?”

“Our fight. Against the British, against slavery.” He smiles again, small and slanting, like he’s guessed Hamilton’s thoughts. “You, I’ll take in whatever measures I’m given.”

He scoffs and tries to sound amused, for all he can feel the frown pinching his forehead. “No one doubts your dedication.”

Laurens shrugs, as if it’s easy. “Then I won’t give them cause.”

Infuriating, beautiful man.

Laurens’ lips are soft, and Alexander kisses each of them in turn, tasting the tang of blood and powder left from battle. He licks at the wide, pleased curve of Laurens’ lower lip, rewarded with a sigh against his mouth. He could do this for hours. On occasion, he has.

Laurens once said, in a half-dazed pause for breath, that it was no wonder Alexander had two Schuyler sisters in love with him; Hamilton told him to hush.

All is quiet now. Or, at least, the sounds of soldiers around them have the grace to be set off a ways, far enough that two aides-de-camp might consult one another in peace.

(A foolish phrase that stuck—he was ever telling others that he had to consult with John on matters of politics, details of writing. It was never untrue. They talked the matter through, and only when it was done, well past dark, candles burning low, would one or the other lean across a desk, catch the other by the chin, and. Well.

The rest never failed to follow naturally enough.)

“I need you alive,” he says, knowing he has no right to echo those words.

The smile on Laurens’ face remains, impossibly fond and rueful, as he takes Hamilton’s hand and laces their fingers together. “And I need to do all I can.”

Alexander nearly laughs, a helpless sound of acknowledgment. Of course his Laurens will never give up; the war will be won and slavery a distant memory before he finds it in himself to rest. It is not even human pride, or ambition, or hopes of his own that spur him on—only goodness and pure determination, the likes of which Hamilton never expects to find again.

“I love you for it.” He traces a scrape across Laurens’ knuckles with his thumb.

“Ah?” Laurens moves very slightly, a wry twist of his hair on the pillow. “If I recall your last letter, what you love is my—”

“Don’t make me kill a wounded man,” Hamilton pleads, his tone earnest enough to that it sets Laurens laughing, wincing and clinging gingerly to his injured side all the while.

“A- _hem_ ,” says Lafayette, whilst dragging the heel of his boot just outside the tent, that they might have a moment to regroup, if caught in the midst of anything improper. Not that it’s anything he hasn’t seen before. They’ve all of them lived in close quarters, without secrets.

“Yes?” Laurens and Hamilton respond in unison, a thing now too commonplace to notice.

Lafayette takes this cue to enter, a bottle in one hand and a spare blanket—most likely his own—draped over the other. “The general sends whiskey for our brash and very stupid invalid.”

“Are those his words?” As Laurens sits up, eyebrows raised, Hamilton shifts to sit just behind him without thought, that John might lean against him for balance.

“They’re mine.” Lafayette drops the blanket while muttering something about _damn fool Americans, look at him there again, back on his back like the Brits gon’ be scared of him_ , most of it in French. “I should get this for the years taken off my life, watching you rush into battle with so little regard for yourself,” he huffs, but hands over the bottle anyway.

“You two,” Laurens mutters, leaving off the rest to take a long, steady drink.

“The handsomest, best-dressed men of this army,” says Lafayette. “And, you will notice, not shot.”

Laurens looks quite ready to argue the exact nature of his injury, but Hamilton does not want to hear it. Bad enough for Laurens to be hurt at all; to bicker over specifics is intolerable.

Before he can devise an interruption, Laurens sighs and subsides. The whiskey he holds out to Hamilton, with a fond curl of that beloved mouth. “I think you need this more than me.”

“Take it,” Lafayette insists, pre-empting any protest. “You’ve got to calm down somehow.”

“I’m already calm,” Alexander says with his typical stubbornness, the lie an invitation in itself, and gladly lets them tease him about it ’til Washington calls him away.

 


End file.
